Shatter Me (Book 2)

Survive

Professor Port loaded all of the students onto the airships and dropped off teams in different locations. Port droned on and on about the different locations, dropping off teams every few minutes. He challenged us to slay more grimm than the other teams could. He was rambling on about the dangers, but how we were all trained to handle ourselves and I began to drone out the sound of his voice, losing interest in his words and watching the trees fly by below us.

"That being said, who's up for a challenge?" I barely heard the Professor say. "Aha! A volunteer! Very well then. Miss Neopolitan, get your team ready to jump." I blinked in surprise, trying to process what had been said. I glanced to my teammates to see that Meschever had raised his hand and volunteered our team. I glared at him as we prepared to jump.

"Are you sure that you wanna drop 'em here? It's really not safe. They'll be lucky to survive 10 minutes down there!" the pilot objected. 'Loki will be lucky if he survives 10 minutes with me,' I thought bitterly as Professor Port assured the pilot that he knew what he was doing. We were given orders to jump and each of us leaped from the plane.

I used my umbrella to slow the momentum of my fall before using the curved handle to wrap around a tree and swing slowly down. I glanced up to see how my team would do.

Axelle was the first to catch my attention. She used her swords and twirled them quickly like helicopter propellers, until she drifted down beside me.

"Nice," I complimented.

"Thanks," she replied with a nod before looking up as well as Jake made his way down. He dug his broadsword deep into the trunk of a tree and used it to slow his fall. I nodded in approval and then looked back up, slightly hoping that Meschever would screw up his landing. My eyes scanned the sky and the trees above but there was no sign of him.

"Looking for me, Sweet Thing?" His voice came suddenly from behind me and making me jump. I turned to face him with hate filled words on my tongue. 

A loud crash distracted me from my anger. I turned back to Axelle and Jake and the sound of the crash, seeing a pillar of smoke rising from the trees a good distance away. 

"What happened?" I asked the two,  hoping they had seen whatever it was. 

"The plane," Axelle said in disbelief,  "it just started falling.  It crashed into the trees."

"We have to check for survivors," Jake said with determination in his voice.

"Are you crazy?" Loki  asked in surprise.  "Grimm will be swarming around the devastation of that crash. We don't even know if anyone survived."

"We still have to check," Axelle replied.

"But-" Loki began to protest.

"That's our job," I told him firmly. 

Loki opened his mouth to protest but closed it again. He took a deep breath before reluctantly saying, "fine. Lead the way."

Jake took the lead, heading for the crash. It wasn't long until we came across grimm. Jake signaled for us to be quiet, then signaled for each of us to attack. Luckily we weren't coming across very large grimm. As a team that didn't have much experience together, we weren't very good at coordinated attacks and we kept getting into each other's way. This was more grimm than I had seen in my whole life, and while Loki didn't drop his stupid grin he did at least quit the jokes and start killing things. Somehow we managed to keep moving forward.

"We're almost there," Jake huffed, pulling his sword out of the fading chest of a beowulf. More growls were heard from behind us. They were everywhere, and in greater numbers than any of us had ever seen.